HypnoticMatt Angel and Suzanne Coote’s Netflix film is trying to be a novel suspense thriller. In fact, he does it with such insistence that the strange changes of rhythm and tone seem to be the highest point of his proposal. But the movie, despite some good decisions and an insight into the clever mystery, decays by the minute. Hypnotic he is unable to sustain the low points of the argument from the surprising. Much more when his story deviates towards the sweetened and leaves aside his most inspired and ingenious.
Much of the premise of Hypnotic it is based on analyzing what is considered normal and what is not. But what is even more complicated, it enters the field of showing what the human mind can be – or not – in the middle of incomplete conjectures. The film bases the effectiveness of its argument in showing the darkness within and achieving it through a haunting possibility. What is hidden in the deepest regions of our brain? Are there inconceivable desires and drives that we hardly know anything about?
Hypnotic he assimilates the idea of suggestion and mental control as an open door to mysteries. It also does it as an uncomfortable journey through something harder to assume, such as the loss of identity control. The idea, of course, could pass for an ironic view of modern confusion about the individual, but it is not entirely solid. One of the great problems of the film is the way in which it tries – without succeeding – to sustain the connotation of the invisible other self. A disturbing threat that does not fully manifest itself throughout the film.
Fear and whispers, ‘Hypnotic’ and the weapon of the mind
Jenn (Kate Siegel) is going through all kinds of trouble. Not only does she suffer a painful breakup, she is also unemployed. Siegel, who already has enough experience in horror and suspense cinema, creates a standard character who disappoints with his monotonous quality. This software engineer going through an abrupt personal change seems to be the embodiment of all the platitudes about uprooting. Jenn is in pain and is also going through an awkward moment of questioning her identity.
The film’s insistence on remembering the danger of losing control builds an idea about the plot more complicated than it sounds. In fact, it is clear from the beginning that the threat comes from pressing the unknown gears of the mind and testing its magnitude. And hypnotherapy (which in the film seems to run between two barriers of reality and imagination) is a useful tool to do so. Especially when the script announces the possibility of something terrible happening under what seems like harmless therapy.
Jenn is the blank canvas for what seems like a dangerous experiment. Specifically, because he has lost all means to reaffirm who he was or who he was. The dangerous setting makes the chance encounter with therapist Collin Meade (Jason O’Mara) as providential as it is suspicious. For Jenn, who needs to ask herself the right questions – and again, the film underscores that need – therapy is a panacea. But one that can replace depressed days or mere awareness of your inability to move anywhere. It is not clear if in an intentional way or in a more or less structured way, the film Hypnotic is interested in talking about the without reason. In pointing out to what extent we are influenced and how a major crisis can demolish what we believe to be real and safe.
But when Meade offers Jenn his hypnotic therapy, that suggestive dual view on behavior collapses. And that’s when the film calls on all its resources (and especially Siegel as an actress) to maintain a certain verisimilitude. Sometimes it succeeds, but most of the time, the feeling seems to be one of large-scale manipulation. All sorts of strange situations begin to happen around Jenn, and at the same time, a newfound perception of fear. In more skilled hands, that would lead the story to the question whether Jenn uses hypnotherapy as an excuse or whether Meade has really done something to her mind.
But the duo of directors force an uncomfortable idea about time, good and evil. He does it as a line of impossible conditions that end up turning the film into a delirious collection of absurdities. As if that wasn’t enough Hypnotic links his premise on the ability of hypnosis to be corrosive to fear. So there is nothing more than the idea of an unknown therapy in combination with the vulnerability of the patient. For the second section, it is inevitable to ask questions about the very substance of the argument: where is the sinister premise of a method constructed to create mental slaves or worse?
An erratic path through the mind
For his final scenes, perhaps the best for their unprejudiced absurd quality, Hypnotic he found a certain sense of doing and fear intriguing. But by then the movie You have wasted too much time navigating cumbersome terrain or trying to fool the viewer. Perhaps, if the argument had revealed its great? secret from the start, it would most likely be more effective.
But in the end, the film is a messy run by broader, more interesting and peculiar ideas. Jenn’s terrifying perception of what is happening to her and what actually happens they don’t end up fitting. And it is that distortion that is only corrected at the end, which ends up turning the film into a rare mix of unsolved story lines.